Ghastlie Inspiration Projects

Welcome to this Ghastlie Blog Hop

Madame Samm one day said, "let's have a Ghastlie Blog Hop" (or something like that), so here we are, doing just that!  How fun!

My project ideas started with this Ghastlie Tea Party

Which is right now currently serving up a tutorial over at Sew We Quilt.  I'm over there giving away all my little secrets for rubber stamping on fabric.  It's quite easy and extremely fun...check it out when you're finished here.  You can find my paper piecing tutorial and this fun border stripe tutorial over there on the right side of my blog listed under Tutorials.

I can't really even take credit for this next project.  In my tutorial  for that fun stripe border I showed how I use one of my mug rugs as an ironing pad while I do small paper pieced projects using my "iron on a stick" for pressing the seams.  Madame Samm honed right in on that!  So this ghastlie ironing pad (larger than a mug rug) is for right next to your sewing machine for those mini pressing jobs...well, soon it will be right next to Samm's machine for her mini pressing jobs.

Next, is a mug rug for your mug and snack.  Somehow I've ended up with an extra mug rug so, when you make comments here today and you mention you'd like to have this mug rug,

you will have a chance to win this ghastlie mug rug...and I doubt that it will travel alone.  In fact, it will travel with this ghastlie postcard of the Ghastlie Knitters.

And here is finally my quite involved Ghastlie project that is still a work in progress.  I've no clue what possessed me to create this tedious applique monster.  Yes, every letter is individually cut and raw edge appliqued to the background.  It had to be done, I'd already decided.  All the while stitching I kept wondering what I was punishing myself for.

Each character was cut from the orange background fabric and fused to that fun thin line black and white fabric and again, raw edge appliqued. 
It's a 36" circle and intended as a table mat.  I suppose it could be placed on the floor as well, but I don't at the moment have a floor that nobody walks on.  This is not the design that I started out with.  That one didn't work out.  So, this one is still evolving...there will yet be some bats and pumpkins for color and maybe another bird, and after that...well, who knows at this point.  I just keep plugging along with it.

The ghastlies are not necessarily a Halloween themed fabric, but that's how they always play out in my mind.  They live amongst us every day, but they really fit in during our Halloween fun.

Now don't forget if you leave a comment here for me, I will draw one name to send over to Madame Samm to enter in today's grand prize drawing on her blog and I'll draw another name as the winner of my Ghastlie mug rug and postcard.

I'd love it if you'd add yourself to my collage of followers at the top of my blog...you'd look so cool up there!

Here is today's ghastlie line up of blogs to hop:

                          Mrs. Annie Ghastlie (You are here) 

Mrs Doris Ghastlie

Mrs Brandie Ghastlie

Ms. Alidiza Ghastlie

Mrs. JudyC Ghastlie

Have a ghastlie good time on this Ghastlie Blog Hop!
Thank you so much for visiting today.

It's time to sew for Halloween!

How frightfully fun is that?!

It's the time of year where we can just let our imagination and creativity run wild with some fun creations.  Some come out seriously beautiful and others come out quirky and whimsical and sometimes just plain silly.

Back in the day...I didn't much use my imagination.  I looked for books and patterns to use.  And I pretty much had to like the whole thing at the prices of patterns and books.  Now I use at least some imagination...for instance, this spooky pumpkin patch comes from several sources.  The woven background is from a book, the pumpkin is from an applique pattern, the twisted pumpkin vine and quilt label came from my imagination, the crows came from a rubber stamp.

So I'm looking at books and patterns completely different now than I did "back in the day".  I see bits and pieces of ideas rather than the whole of what is presented.  And, as you can see, those bits and pieces come from everywhere!

It's Halloween Mug Rug Swap time on Flickr!

My favorite swap time.

We are assigned secret partners who give us an indication of what types of things they like and dislike and we then create from there.  I've been pretty lucky with partners for one of the rules is that the mug rug has to be fashioned to their likes.  This is the one rule that I don't get along very well with because if I want to receive in a swap something that I'd make for myself, well then, why don't I just make it myself?  In a swap I want to receive something that my partner wants to make and I want it to tell me something about that person and their creative soul.  (Well don't I just feel better about airing that in public)  In any case, we then get to post sneak peeks as we create...

Carol says "no sneak peeks!" that that's just for the doll quilt swap.  Ok, so maybe we could call them progress peeks.  Either way, if you go check out the Scrappy Mug Rug Swap you'll see that Carol has been out-voted in favor of sneak peeks.  Sorry Carol.  They're just too fun not to do them.  My partner's mug rug is finished now and waiting to be mailed.

We can include bits of goodies if we so desire...like candy, fabric pieces, stickers, whatever we find that we might like to send.  Only the mug rug is mandatory but extra little goodies are just fun to include.  It seems to have become my signature thing to include a fabric postcard.  And...

It's Halloween fabric postcard swap time on Flickr too!

Check out this Fabric Postcard Swap.  Although it's too late to join in for Halloween and Fall, you could be getting ready for Christmas...I would think there will be another round for the holidays.   

So I have two postcards ready to send.  I can't say who gets which yet.  And, I just might make one or two more before it's time to send them...just to keep my partner wondering what she'll get...since the postcard swap is not a secret partner swap at this point.

For myself, I'm enjoying my Halloween quilt that I made last year.

Those gorgeous pumpkins were made for me by a wonderful friend.

Have a frightfully good fun time preparing for the onslaught of ghouls that are sure to come soon!

Annie

All In A Row wall quilt inspiration

I made this little quilt for the Little Quilt - Sew, Vote, Swap Group

I was inspired by these quilt as you go blocks by Marianne Haak, MariQuilts Strips On Stripes.  Marianne's style for quilts is so awesome!  I could look at her quilts all day long.  Anyway, I started with a favorite piece of fabric of mine...the black and white stripe.  I cut through it to insert the black and white check.  Since it's a quilt as you go (QAYG), I layered the batting and just a muslin back since it's intended to hang on the wall.  Then I started choosing fabrics to sew/quilt between the stripes...making new colorful stripes.  I loved the way the strips were making the check look.

This little quilt was always intended for the swap.  But I really liked it and did not want to let it go.  I hung it on the wall thinking I'd get tired of looking at it.  Then the more I looked at it, the more I thought I'd like maybe the same thing with a bit more white in the background and less black stripes.  So I went scrounging around for a different b&w stripe.  I found this:

It's an inexpensive grade of fabric (you can tell when you work with it it gets fuzzy looking) but it would be good for a trial run as a mug rug.  I could let my husband use it and not care when it turned coffee stained.  It came out looking like so:

I liked it, it showed more white, but I wasn't real happy with the stripe.  I  

decided the background fabric needed to be white with a black pinstripe.  Well of course I decided that...I could not find that fabric anywhere local or in cyberland.  If I wanted that, I was going to have to make it myself.   

So I did.  I sewed fat white strips of fabric to black strips of fabric so that the black strip would end up being 1/8".  I really hate when my plan of attack doesn't work out!  That wasn't straight no matter how careful I was.  You guessed it...you're NOT gonna see a picture of that!

For several days I "mused" on this seemingly impossible want.  It finally hit me!  The way to make my own stripes and have them straight was to paper piece them!  Geezelouise why did that take so long?!  so I did these paper pieced stripes:

and then stitched in the checks:

and then stitched in some colorful stripes and added the binding for this end result:

All three of these little quilts turned out different looking.  I'm considering taking the black binding off this last one and trying either white or one of my other b&w tiny tight stripe bindings.  But at the moment, my first one is still my favorite.  I guess I have to call it Julie's now, not mine...it's been mailed...it was so hard to let it drop into that big blue box knowing I could not get it back out.  hahaha.  I've teased on flickr that if my partner seriously doesn't really like it, she could send it back to me.  Which she can, but if she does want to keep it, I COULD make myself another.  I'm just not good at making the same thing more than once...so it'll probably never happen.  I hope you enjoy my little quilt, Julie.

I received this meticulously created little quilt in exchange.   It was created by Martha Wolf (moogiequilter). 

I love this little creation so much that I'm not missing mine quite so much anymore.  Thank you Martha!

Thanks for stopping by today,

Annie